


Three Outsider views on Walter Bishop - the man that was and the man that is

by rainer76



Category: Fringe
Genre: Amber-verse, Background fic, Blue-verse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 02:50:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the title says - three outsider perspectives on Dr. Bishop - running from 1991 to 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Outsider views on Walter Bishop - the man that was and the man that is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amalnahurriyeh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amalnahurriyeh/gifts).



> Warning, there are three different perspectives running throughout this story, the first of which is both unpleasant and potentially offensive, caution is advised.

 

 

"A little memory loss is sometimes kinder for the soul."

                                - Walter Bishop.

 

 

1/. 

SAINT CLAIRES

_AMBER-VERSE_

2012

 

(The orderly):

 

It’s Rowan O’Brien who calls it the daycare centre – crapping and hollering like a bunch of two year ol’ midgets - some are sedate, others would soon bite your ear off; point is, you get to know your designated section smart quick.  The first time Walter Bishop entered the daycare he was haughtier than Edith Evans, sharp-tongued and quick as a rattlesnake; he looked like one too, eyes hooded with a wide mouth, pulled flat and unsmiling.  I wash floors for a living.  It ain’t glamorous but it pays. I’m muscle resource when the midgets get flighty and that Bishop guy, he made me feel dumber than monkey shit his first day, nay, he _delighted_ in it, man; a school-yard bully of a different ilk.

The newspapers said he burnt a young woman alive.  Technically, he should have sung the choir at Sing-Sing - see how far his intelligence got him then - manslaughter with a secondary charge of criminal negligence, they said.  The Superior Court of Massachusetts found Walter Bishop guilty but an appeal at the Plymouth Superior Court - and some fancy footwork by his Counsel, Philip G. Gormier – got it overturned on the grounds of him being mentally unfit.  And I gotta say, the day Walter Bishop was escorted into my ward, sneering with superior airs on, I figured it _had_ to have been a staged fall.  Gormier, right?  That’s some serious - and _expensive_ \- Counsel. Except Bishop wouldn’t stop babbling about the guys in the hats, how he was being followed, every second, every day.  Schizophrenia combined with acute paranoia, Gornier argued in court, Doc Sumner concurred, and the judge agreed.  His mental illness didn’t present until later, exacerbated by Walter’s on-going abuse of cannabis.

St. Claire’s is clean, doing its best with the resources allocated, underfunded, but who isn’t in this climate?  Mental health sits low on the public radar.  Folks are more likely to throw their coins in the cure for cancer bucket, heck, even penile dysfunction gets a better rap, but mention mental instability?  Suddenly the whole room gets uncomfortable.  It’s either swept under the carpet or falls into sensationalism – forget the facts and figures - or how one person in three will come down with major depression at least once in their lives.  And if you dare whisper the big names, Psychotics, Schizo’s, Paranoids, everyone backs away, everyone has somewhere else they desperately need to be. There’s not a lot of revenue funding for the criminally insane.  So we get by, the docs, nurses, orderlies too.  Sometimes it’s a day care centre - where you can lead them by the hand, make sure they swallow their pills, tuck them in at night, hose them off in the mornings, do all those civil-like things, you know?  And other days it’s an animal house.  But you gotta be careful who you say that shit to; if Sumner’s catches wind of that talk, he’ll fire you, no oops about it. 

Walter Bishop?  He was faking it for sure.  Life in prison or life at daycare with an endless supply of jelly cups, I know which one I’d pick, and his PhD’s are on steroids; he has enough smarts to out-quack the quacks.  Yeah, I had his number from the day he first stepped into my ward, acting out like some curly haired Randle McMurphy wanna-be.  And in the end, he had my number, too. 

He guessed my IQ.  He guessed my geographical location.  Hell, he even guessed how many ex-wives I had.  He told me frank that if he wanted to burn someone to ash he knew all the means and chemicals to do so.  He told me, with that dead-eyed smile, what would be in _my_ maintenance closet; which chemicals he’d mix, the blast radius, how he’d go about it, and maybe it was just him showing off his great intellect, and maybe it was something else, but I don’t take kindly to threats. 

He wasn’t a day care kid.  He _was_ the animal house.  Making sure Walter Bishop knew who was king was my department. 

He lost the haughtiness the first night he was strapped to his bed - when you mix laxatives with meds and leave him in his own mess until morning – that can make a monkey drop his gaze.  No one was checking up on the likes of him; he had no family to cry to, and to be honest you don’t need to be heavy-handed.  Sometimes it’s as easy as shortening a man’s name, Doctor Bishop sounds so respectable, little Wally in room 120 not so much, and he hated that abbreviation.  Like I said, it doesn’t take much.  The inmates have so few personal possessions to their name – take away his lucky silver dollar – and I could make Wally explode with violence, or plea tearfully.  It’s not about physical harm but emotional leverage, pulling the puppet strings between sedation and restraint, making sure he knew who had the seat of power in this addled house.  He might have been a self-made god out there, in the real world, but in here he was nothing but a number.

Yeah, he was sane. I’d bet my retirement fund on it.  But the funny thing is: he lost his marbles the day Dr. Parris showed up.  Seven visitations for unscheduled surgery – and each time, little Wally came back less coherent - till one day he didn’t come back at all, and what did return, what remained, hell, that was crazier than the legits.   Not worth tormenting.

Two chicks pulled him out of Saint Claire’s in 2008, fine looking women with ‘government agent’ stamped all over them.  They must be breeding them for looks in the FBI because they turned heads everywhere; coffee and cream, mix the two together, party all round.  I even stood tall for them; bitches didn’t even see me.  The blonde was connected to Nina Sharp.   I guess a multi-millionaire - and CEO of the most profitable company in the world - has legitimate pull with senators and government officials alike because Walter Bishop was signed out of daycare the same day.   The girl with curls had one arm wrapped around Wally’s shoulders, voice cajoling.  He flinched at every new sound, kept his eyes glued to the ground, and hurried past me without so much as a by your leave.

Didn’t see him again until today.  I thought I’d see his face _much_ sooner.

But it was a real pleasure - seeing little Wally flinch when I spoke - how his eyes dropped and his hands shook, how he reverted so sweetly.  The blonde chick was still with him after all these years - speaking with the admin, paying me no mind - but there was a younger man there, too.  _He_ noticed me.  He let Walter scurry past then turned around to stare, real slow.  I could see his jaw clench even from a distance, and I guess he’s the type of guy with personal experience on the layout of a zoo – all the monsters contained, all the personality types that like to rattle the bars - because I didn’t much care for the look he gave me. 

To be honest, it seemed like a good time to stare at the ground.

 

 

 

2/.

SAINT CLAIRES

_BLUE VERSE_

1991

 

 

(The doctor):

 

 

“Acetone.  Acetic acid.  Hexane.”

“Can you tell me about the events of June 2nd, 1991?”

The patient’s arms are lax; he’s pulled the chair further away from the desk, ankles crossed neatly, wearing slip-on shoes and no socks.  The white skin of his exposed ankles appears fragile in the dim light.  Walter Bishop has been in Saint Claire’s custody for three days; he stares at Sumner with one lip curled upward. 

“I was not responsible for that girl’s death.” The patient’s gaze drifts toward the window.  “Sulfuric.  Nitric and hydrochloric acids,” he says under his breath; there’s a flatness to his tone, each word succinct. 

Sumner leans backward in his seat, not bothering to check his notes.  “That girl?  You mean Carla Warren?  I understand she was your assistant for almost ten years, she doesn’t warrant more consideration than: ‘that girl’?”

“I wasn’t in the laboratory when the fire began, to hold me accountable for her death is criminal on multiple levels, I’m not responsible if ‘that girl’ – “ and the patient says it snidely -  “‘stirred the wrong chemicals in the wrong vat.  It’s a laboratory.  Not a child’s playpen.”

“You weren’t responsible?”

“For.  The.  Fire.”

“I see.  You understand Harvard University installed security cameras in the Kresge building in 1989.  There are in fact, two cameras stationed near the staircase leading down to the basement and you were seen, on film, entering the premises at seventeen hundred hours on the evening of June 2nd?  In effect, you were there mere minutes before the fire began.”

“So they said in the preliminary trial.”

“And in the trial, you argued you were intentionally framed, your lab ransacked then destroyed by who, what?  The men in the hats, Carla Warren, your partner and friend, William Bell, who was out of the country at the time?  You said you were being followed, Walter.  You understand how that might sound?”

“I understand it’s your job to pigeon-hole me.  I understand you need to make the events surrounding the fire logical - to fit your shallow mind.  I understand you won’t address me as Dr. Bishop because it undermines your own authority and I understand your assumptions are erroneous.   Let me guess – auditory and visual hallucinations, feelings of prosecution and disorganized thinking, disrupted cognitive patterns…”

Sumner smiles like a shallow cut, the barest hint of teeth as he quotes: “Believing you’re controlled by an external force.  Manipulated by beings of a superior nature.  Having thoughts both inserted and _withdrawn_ from your conscious mind.  I’ve read the DMV, too, Walter.”

“Then you would know I don’t hold conversations with my hallucinations.  I am not a schizophrenic or mad.”   As an aside to the room, Walter murmurs, “Ammonium, sodium hydroxides, hydrogen peroxide.”

Sumner jots a note down on paper. “We know you were in the Kresge building.  If you weren’t in the laboratory at the time of the fire where were you in the basement exactly?”

“Following the dragon through the damp caves.” Walter cuts his gaze away, voice terse.  “It was imperative I get them out, you see, Belly had no right.” 

Potassium. Chlorine and oxidants.  Petroleum naphtha.  They’re all chemicals commonly found in maintenance closets, in any scientific laboratory across the country.  The fire on June 2nd, 1991, burned at sixteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit, greedily, it sucked the oxygen out of the room before extinguishing itself within minutes.  Carla Warren was identified by her teeth. 

Sumner considers his patient, a slow click of the pen as he depresses the nub. 

Walter cycles through his list of chemicals and ignition sources, names one or two orderlies from the western wing then falls silent, content to pick the loose thread on his shirt.  It’s not the first time Walter’s mentioned William Bell in Sumner’s presence – his name’s become a convenient scapegoat – a means of redirecting blame elsewhere to lessen Walter’s own burden.  Bell had organized Walter’s legal defense during the preliminary hearing but had distanced himself from his friend and collaborator since, remaining abroad for the duration of the trial.  There’s rivalry here, Sumner understands, as well as genuine friendship and anger.

At this stage he can feed the delusion, ask Walter _who_ he had to ‘get out’ of the basement, why Belly had no right and where the magical dragon was flying, or he can redirect Walter to the matter at hand, the death of a young woman and Walter’s inability to provide a safe working environment for his employees and the people around him, how that led to criminal negligence.  He can address the muttered list of chemicals that Walter cycles through, try and lead him to the event he’s both dwelling on and attempting to avoid with flights of fancy, focus on the tangible facts.  Ignore the dragon, Sumner decides, and don’t feed the delusion any further.  There are no dragons at Harvard.  “Can you describe Ms Warren for me?  Visually.  Her likes, dislikes?  You spent ten years in her company, Walter, you must have known Carla intimately.”

“I imagine she had hair bright as a flame.  I’m rather partial to blondes you see.” His jaw sets. Walter stares across the desk challengingly.  “You’re trying to invoke an emotional response, you want to see evidence of remorse, could you be more blatant, Dr. Sumner?  Perhaps I didn’t like Carla.  Perhaps there’s nothing to grieve here.  Would faking it be a better option, make me seem less psychotic and more human in your eyes?”  His tone is immature, the type of personality who doesn’t like being questioned – not by his wife, family, or by his colleagues - who doesn’t understand the word ‘no’ and prefers obedience _.  Predatory_ , Sumner scribbles beneath his margin notes, accompanied by a question mark.   “Beautiful blonde hair,” Walter continues absently, and violently plucks the thread off his shirt.  “She had a photographic memory and they weren’t supposed to remember, you see.  Belly had no right, no right at all.”

Unsettled, Sumner consults Carla Warren’s medical file, his finger running down the page.  “Ms Warren didn’t have a photographic memory, Walter.”

“I’m aware of that you nincompoop.”

“I can’t aid you, or provide a medical plan to hasten your departure from Saint Claire’s if you don’t trust me with information, or with what you’re feeling.”

Walter leans forward and lowers his voice to a near whisper, a decibel Sumner didn’t think he was previously capable of.  “I’m hungry, more specifically for red herring. You and I both know I’m not getting out of Saint Claire’s. I am not mad and furthermore saying I am not mad does _not_ indicate my insanity. Doctorates from the bottom of a cereal box, that’s what you share in common with Belly!  You can’t wait to break out the drugs, the restraints, the _electric shock_ treatment!  Don’t think I don’t know William set me up, I know you’re in on it!  You’re all in on it!” Walter roars.

Sumner’s seen this exact moment a thousand times, the switch from benign to violent, and for all that, he’s still not accustomed to it, the way his heart pounds, his lungs constrict, how he’s acutely aware of how much distance there is between the two of them.  Walter stands so suddenly the chair overturns.  His words reverberate off the walls at a full shout.  Walter’s face is flat with anger.  Outside, Sumner’s two orderlies, Rowan O’Brien and Andre Miller, stand at attention, one hand on the doorknob as they peer through the glass.  Sumner has mere seconds to decide if he wants to continue the session or terminate.  “Sit down, Walter.”  His voice is a whip-crack, the verbal equivalent of a slap.  It has the desired effect.  Walter sways on his feet, complexion washing grey as he follows Sumner’s line of sight to the two orderlies by the door, jerkily, he uprights the chair and sits.  Mildly, Sumner notes:  “ECT isn’t a common treatment for psychosis’ other than depression.  It’s not on your management profile, Walter, and even if it were, the effects are negligible.”

Walter laughs without humor.  “It has one very notable effect, Dr. Sumner, retrograde amnesia, wiping out months or sometimes years depending on the severity of the shock and the age of the patient.”

“Then you also know most patients will eventually regain those memories and ECT is only ever conducted on adults.”

Walter flinches bodily, he gasps as if punched.  “Not all the time.  Johanna Wahl, the shock was so severe it destroyed fourteen years worth of memories, never to be recovered.  My boy – “ he stops abruptly, voice hoarse, no longer strident, and turns his face away.  “They were only children... oh god…Belly should have _asked_ me first.  She had a photographic memory, do you understand how many volts that is?  And he’s not from here, his tolerance was different.  Eighty-six subjects over four years, _none of them were supposed to remember_.”

“Walter,” Sumner says gently, baffled and trying not to show it.  He tries to bring his patient back to the present, to ease his paranoia and sense of prosecution, to take away his fear of electric shock.  “You have nothing to worry about here.  ECT is a last resort and we have no intention of shocking you.”

“You understand nothing, you idiot.” 

 

***

 

“How is he?” Andre asks when Sumner finally leaves the room. 

The orderly’s tall, gangly, and quick on his feet; he smiles blandly whenever Sumner glances at him.  Andre does his job with minimal fuss but Sumner’s never liked him and he’s never been able to pinpoint why.  He reorders the folders in his hand and answers shortly.  “Certifiable.  Walter Bishop’s a collection of conspiracy theories, heightened paranoia, and an ego that borders on a god-complex.  He’s incapable of maintaining linear thought, flies off on a thousand different tangents, and has minimal capacity for empathy.  He exhibits no guilt whatsoever over Carla Warren’s death.  He doesn’t take responsibility for the fire.”

“Huh,” Andre says, unimpressed.  “You want me to take him back to his room for ya, doc?”

Wearily, Sumner nods and ambles by.  “Thank you, Andre, that would be kind of you.”

 

 

 

3/. 

SIMI VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

_AMBER-VERSE,_

2013

 

(The friend):

 

 

“California in the United States, France in the Provence region and the Yarra Valley in southern Australia are the three areas most prone to wildfires, natural hotspots if you will, a combination of vegetation, terrain, and the type of weather typical to the region.  Did you know the Black Saturday fires of Australia burnt at temperatures of one thousand and two hundred degrees Celsius?”

Astrid grabs for his hand when her shoes slip.  The ground is treacherous underfoot.  There’s ash everywhere, coating the back of her throat, on her boots, under her nails.  Walter twirls a circle, giddy and completely oblivious, kicking up a fake snowstorm. Astrid calculates for a minute then raises an eyebrow.  “That’s two thousand, one hundred and ninety degrees Fahrenheit.”

“More fascinating, there were no direct burn victims treated at hospital on Black Saturday, only radiant burns; anyone standing close enough to the flames to be touched by them was already obliterated by the heat.  The amount of energy generated by the firestorm was the equivalent of one thousand and five hundred Hiroshima-sized bombs being dropped simultaneously.  Their bodies, and the trees, exploded before the flames ever reached them.”

“Walter,” Astrid says quietly, and comes to a stop, her toes poking the ash.  It’s been two days since the wildfire tore through the area.  The ground still feels warm underfoot, penetrating the soles of her boots.  Everything is muted, hushed. “Do you have to sound so gleeful?”

“Oh, don’t worry dear, they were extraordinary circumstances and this was a small fire in comparison, the loss of life negligible.  I always had a fascination with fire, which is odd, considering how I was institutionalized.  I meant to speak to her mother afterward, to offer my condolences, but I never… I couldn’t bring myself to do until I was better.”  He trails off, staring upward at the mottled sky and scratches behind his ear vigorously.  Some of the bright interest fades from his expression when he returns his focus to her; Walter regards Astrid with genuine concern.  “Have you eaten?” he asks, before presenting Astrid with a red vine from the depths of his coat pocket. “I had coffee mouse for breakfast this morning, I believe it left me wired.”  Helpfully, Walter picks the lint off for her.

If Astrid had coffee mouse for breakfast she’d be a Type 2 diabetic by now.  “The world is unfair,” she declares, solemnly.

“But sometimes it’s surprisingly wonderful.”

He wiggles the red vine at her.  Astrid takes it, chews on one end thoughtfully.  “Do you want to tell me what we’re looking for?  It’s been hours now.”

“ _Eucalyptus pauciflora_.  Trees are symmetrical, the mass seen above ground is a direct reflection of what’s below the ground, kind of amazing when you think about the majestic height of a Hyperion, or even the scrappy gum-tree, how deep and wide those roots must run.”

“Oh, I see, so you’re in lecture mode again.”

“Rubbish, Ascot, _everyday_ is lecture mode.”  He grins at her, delighted. 

Astrid breaks the red vine in two and gives half back, looping her arm around his elbow.  “Your lectures must have been a nightmare for the poor undergrad students at Harvard – they’d never know which was the salient point.  Their notebooks would have been filled with angry question marks.”

“True.  Most of them were underlined too, I was always greater at live demonstration, otherwise, keep them on their toes, I say.”

“Speaking of which, mine are tiring.”

He points at a hollow in the ground where a eucalyptus once stood.  It’s fallen over, a victim of the fire; bark charred black and all the foliage cindered from its branches.  The earth is churned up around the roots, and Astrid, staring at it, realizes the trunk _hasn’t_ actually snapped so much as keeled over.  The roots have pulled upward from below, but are still attached to the fallen tree.

“Have you ever heard of the folklore of never standing in the hollow of a fallen eucalyptus?”

It’s only a medium sized tree.  Astrid tilts her head quizzically at the exposed crater, at the roots snaking upward.  “No.”

He jiggles in excitement, no other word for it.  “It’s very rare, and it depends on the exact temperature, but the roots elasticize with the exposure to heat, and the weight of the tree will cause it to bend until it’s prone on the forest floor.  When the fire’s passed, the foliage burnt off - when what’s _below_ the ground weighs more than what’s above - the roots will contract with the exposure to cooler air.” 

Walter looks at her sideways. “Fascinating,” Astrid says, deadpan, and shrieks, _loudly,_ when the tree snaps upright. 

It’s not slow, it happens in a heartbeat.  A low groan of tortured wood, of ash that tumbles downward like snowfall.  The movement is so sudden, unexpected, that Astrid ends up on her rump, scrambling backward from the hollow.  The tree wavers before it steadies, standing stark and tall above her. 

Joyful, Walter stares at it.  “Reminds me of JRR Tolkien, his warrior forest, never stand in the crater of a tree, dear, for fear you may be squashed.”

“Oh my god,” Astrid says, stunned, and then incoherently.  “Does it…will it recover?”

His face flickers.  “No.  The roots were exposed to flame, eventually it will keel over again, within a day or two, but you wouldn’t know it at the moment.”  He looks at her intently.  “It’s kind of magical, don’t you think?  Despite the ruin?  Despite it’s eventual fall?”

“Definitely worth seeing.”

His smile is less manic, more reflective.  He takes a deep breath and offers his hand.  Astrid accepts it, but doesn’t put any weight in the motion, standing on her own for fear she might pull Walter over.  “You have ash on your derriere,” he reveals.

“Does that mean you’re paying for the dry-cleaning?” she asks dryly, and brushes her bum off.

He looks at her woefully – with the undertone of bright cunning.  “But I have no income, dear.”

“Right, you’re an indentured servant, you better have made enough coffee mouse for two.”

“For the four of us, in fact.  I like to bulk create.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>    
> Section one was influenced by the episode 4:20, namely the forty second scene between Walter and an unnamed orderly at Saint Claire’s – yeah, I went the cliché and made him a douche-bag – sorry about that. 
> 
> Section two. ECT and memory loss: there is a proven connection between electro convulsive therapy and retrograde amnesia, the longest documented case was seventeen years and the memories have yet to be recovered – but that’s the extreme and nowhere near the norm, in most instances, the days or weeks prior to treatment are lost. When the patient has sufficiently recovered from the electrical disruption, these memories will return, although there's no set timetable. In the original time-line (blue-verse) this is touched on twice. Season one: Peter to Walter: “You used to do this to me when I was a kid. You’d strap me down and shock me.” (Walter) “Yes. We were gathering infor-“. (Peter): “No. You were experimenting.” It’s a curious conversation in light of the fact that neither Olivia nor Peter can remember Jacksonville, despite Olivia’s photographic memory, curious even more considering in amber-verse (when Peter dies as a boy) Olivia, and all the rest of the cortexi-kids, remember the experiments in all their glory. The theme of electricity and memory loss is touched on again in the season three finale – when Peter’s zapped by an electrical surge and thrown halfway across the room – and as a result, loses over twenty years worth of blue memories while regaining his suppressed red history. It's interesting to note how easily he operates in this state. As an adult, he’ll eventually recover, and judging by the flashback scene when he's walking up the staircase toward the Machine, successfully reintegrate his time in both blue and red, as well as his forgotten early meeting with Olivia. 
> 
> The rest of this is just speculation, very little to do with the show itself, and likely not of interest to anyone else, but since in blue-verse the cortexiphan children were never supposed to remember the experiments, my own head-canon has Belly and Walter using ECT as a solution. 
> 
> This is a slightly darker interpretation of Walter – in keeping with the Walter that was versus the Walter that is - and while it can be arguably 'justified' with Peter (canon supports it) - his earliest childhood memories start around age nine or ten - I've extended it to the other eighty-six children as well. In truth, there's no evidence to suggest it with the cortexi-kids, but like I said, head-canon. (shrugs) If Peter was patient zero, science explains why he can't remember his early childhood or Olivia, the 'fringe' part of fringe science would be the segment where Walter and Bell figure out how to target specific memories for the other kids, rather than wiping out everything. This is also my tie in for Elizabeth. She's shown in both red-verse and blue to be a woman of remarkable compassion. Aside from Bell, no one ever visited Walter in Saint Claire's, not once in seventeen years. It's used as a plot point to highlight Peter's burgeoning guilt in the series - but the other half of the equation is actually Elizabeth. 
> 
> For me, at least, this is the one thing Walter did that she could never forgive. And inadvertently, made a lie out of Elizabeth's promise to Peter in Subject 13.
> 
> Section three: The facts and figures regarding Black Saturday are accurate, 173 people perished in the firestorm, the majority of whom were never recovered, a further 414 were injured by flying debris or secondary spot-fires, and were treated for radiant burns. I churn out fan fiction, occasionally I’ll slot in a fact or two, but for the most part I prefer flights of fancy. No prizes for guessing which is which.


End file.
